When visiting McLaren’s factory earlier this year, we learned that the McLaren Special Operations division, which builds personalized cars for discriminating clients, was working on an incredible custom-bodied project. A client had requested totally unique bodywork for an MP4-12C. The final product, MSO staff said, would bear no resemblance to the normal MP4-12C. In fact, McLaren was considering keeping the project a complete secret. Anyone lucky enough to see the bespoke car on the street wouldn’t make the McLaren connection; only the company, the buyer and his friends, and perhaps a dealer’s staff, would know. We suspect that car turned out to be the X-1 concept, which McLaren recently unveiled at an event during the annual Pebble Beach Festival of Wealth.

The person who commissioned the X-1 has elected to remain anonymous—until he’s spotted snorting caviar in a Monaco parking garage, at least—but McLaren is presenting the X-1 as an example of just how far MSO is willing to go. Virtually everything you can see on the X-1 is bespoke, and resulted from designers working hand-in-hand for 18 months with Monsieur Moneybags. Custom tooling was constructed to cast the carbon-fiber body panels, and new headlights and taillights were designed. Aluminum trim is machined from solid pieces and coated in nickel. McLaren actually did fluid dynamics testing to make sure it would be stable at high speeds, and had to “homologate” it, which we read to mean that McLaren actually conducted some crash testing.

As unappealing as this particular final product is, the big picture is astonishing. McLaren Special Operations is, by all accounts, a massive success. We’re told that a double-digit percentage of MP4-12C buyers pay for some level of individualization by MSO beyond just paint and wheels. Like Ferrari, McLaren has constructed what is by most measures an entirely separate vehicle for a single customer. Just imagine if that customer had better taste.